David Shepardson August 15, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. Senator Gary Peters on Thursday asked Facebook Inc’s (FB.O) chief to answer questions about his 2018 congressional testimony in light of reports that Facebook captured audio from users and sent it to a vendor to be analyzed and transcribed.
“I asked you specifically if Facebook uses audio obtained from mobile devices to enrich personal information about its users. Your emphatic answer was no,” Peters wrote in a letter to Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Katie Paul August 15, 2019
(Reuters) - Facebook (FB.O) users suing the world’s largest social media network over a 2018 data breach say it failed to warn them about risks tied to its single sign-on tool, even though it protected its employees, a court filing on Thursday showed.

Five Facebook cafes will open throughout the UK, with the first popping up inside The Attendant coffee bar on Great Eastern Street in London on August 28th and 29th. At the cafes, visitors will be offered free drinks if they take part in a "privacy check-up".
The check-ups will show users how to customize their Facebook privacy settings, including what personal information is visible to others and what apps have access to their Facebook account.

A class-action lawsuit over a 2018 breach of Facebook has another wrinkle: A new court filing reveals allegations that the social media company moved to protect its own employees from the exploited vulnerability while keeping users in the dark.

Facebook called the allegation, made public Thursday, “absolutely false.” The plaintiffs’ claim centers on the company’s handling of a problem with the “access token” that lets people into their profiles without having to log in every time they visit Facebook.

Facebook said Tuesday it's rolling out a long-awaited privacy feature that will let users clear information from apps and websites they browse outside of the social network.

"We won't know which websites you visited or what you did there, and we won't use any of the data you disconnect to target ads to you on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger," Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer for policy and David Baser, Facebook's director of product management, said in a blog post.​

The tool's debut, which is launching more than a year after it was announced, shows how Facebook has been trying to prove it's doing more to safeguard user privacy amid a series of scandals. The tool could also shed more light on what data Facebook collects about its users from other websites.

Louise Matsakis 08.20.19
By default, Facebook tracks what you do even when you’re not on Facebook, like the products you shop for, the political candidates you donate to, and the porn you watch, using tools like Facebook Pixel, a small piece of code deposited on millions of websites across the internet. The social network uses that information to target you with personalized ads—a business model that is now worth billions of dollars.

There are many criticisms of Facebook’s size, power, and business model, but two stand out for the intensity with which they are usually discussed
One is that Facebook is a dystopian panopticon that monitors our every move and uses that information to predict and manipulate our behavior. The other is that Facebook has come such a pillar of modern life that every product decision it makes could reshape the body politic forever.
Today, in an impressive flurry of news-making, Facebook took steps to address both concerns.

First, the company said it was finally releasing its long-delayed “Clear History” tool in three countries. (The United States is not one of them.) I wrote about it at The Verge:
Some writers, such as Tony Romm here, pointed out that Facebook is not actually deleting your data — which would seem to blunt the impact of a button called “Clear History.” In fact, given that the data link you’re shutting off is primarily relevant to ads you might see later, it feels more like a “Muddle Future” button.

But one day in June, as he was uploading photos from a comic book convention and a family trip to Disneyland, he found himself abruptly logged out.
When Mr. Reeves, 32, tried to sign back in, the Facebook page said that his account had been disabled. It requested a photo to verify his identity. He took a selfie with his iPhone, but Facebook rejected it, as well as several other self portraits.

“My account got disabled, and I need help,” he said. The workers told him no one could assist him.
“What if my account doesn’t get reactivated?” Mr. Reeves asked, desperate. A receptionist advised him to make a new profile. (That’s against Facebook’s terms of service, which specify that users “create only one account (your own).”)​

Mr. Reeves created a new account, but it was disabled within hours; when he made yet another one, it was disabled within minutes. It’s now been three months, and he has no idea why he’s still unable to log in.

When Facebook reviewed 14 disabled accounts belonging to users contacted by The New York Times, the company said that just five had been banned with cause. Facebook suggested that the others should simply go through the appeals process again; most did, but none of their accounts have been reactivated so far.

Facebook has quietly changed the slogan on its homepage encouraging people to signup.

The tagline has been changed from "It's free and always will be" to "It's quick and easy" — ditching, for the first time in more than a decade, a reference to the fact that it costs nothing to become a user.
Using internet archive Wayback Machine, it appears that Facebook quietly switched the slogan at some point between August 6 and August 7.

It marks a departure from familiar Facebook rhetoric. The company has long and vocally touted the fact it is free to use because of its advertising-funded business model.

"Facebook is not free nor has it ever been," lawyer and digital law expert José Antonio Castillo told Business Insider "Facebook's currency was and still is it's users' personal data. It's never been free, though, because data is worth a lot of money."​

As to why Facebook decided to alter its slogan without any warning or explanation, Castillo suspects it could possibly have been spurred by a directive that European Parliament passed in May that, for the first time ever, recognizes that exchanging data is actually a form of payment.

A group of philanthropies working with Facebook to study the social network's impact on democracy threatened on Tuesday to quit, saying the company had failed to make data available to researchers as pledged.

A letter sent from Facebook to Democratic lawmakers has shed new light on the Messenger Kids breach that took place this summer — and inspired new backlash from Congress.

Earlier this year, an implementation error in the Messenger Kids app had allowed children to create group chats with unauthorized users. That violated a core promise of the app, which had pledged to give children a way to talk with friends without potentially exposing them to strangers online.

“Facebook’s response gives little reassurance to parents that Messenger Kids is a safe place for children today,” the Senators wrote. “We are particularly disappointed that Facebook did not commit to undertaking a comprehensive review of Messenger Kids to identify additional bugs or privacy issues. [...]"​

The settings on Instagram include a page devoted to the “Linked Accounts” feature. As you might expect, it displays … your linked accounts. Users have the option to connect to Twitter, Tumblr, and, of course, Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, among others.

Common sense suggests that if you unlink a Facebook account from your Instagram profile, you’ve unlinked that Facebook account from your Instagram profile.
But like many things Facebook, common sense does not exactly apply here. Clicking Unlink Account does not actually unlink a Facebook account from Instagram, a Facebook spokesperson told WIRED, because it isn’t possible to separate the two.

Even if a user never explicitly linked their Facebook and Instagram profiles, they are intrinsically connected​

That’s because the wealth of data that Facebook collects through its multiple services is more than enough to properly identify users’ various accounts and link them to one another.

Click to expand...

“Because Facebook and Instagram share infrastructure, systems and technology, we connect information about your activities across our services based on a variety of signals,” a Facebook spokesperson told WIRED. “Linking or unlinking your accounts in the app doesn’t affect this.”

Facebook may no longer be a free app to use, as spotted by Business Insider. Facebook, one of the most popular social media websites, removed its slogan it has had for over a decade. Facebook started as a free platform that gathers people together who want to connect with their friends and family, and one of the reasons it attracted so many people is because of its promise that it will always be free. However, that may no longer be the case in the future.

Facebook could soon start hiding the Like counter on News Feed posts to protect users’ from envy and dissuade them from self-censorship. Instagram is already testing this in 7 countries including Canada and Brazil, showing a post’s audience just a few names of mutual friends who’ve Liked it instead of the total number.

The idea is to prevent users from destructively comparing themselves to others and potentially feeing inadequate if their posts don’t get as many Likes. It could also stop users from deleting posts they think aren’t getting enough Likes or not sharing in the first place.
The problem is that people have so many fewer of those big moments, and the large Like counts they attract can make other users self-conscious of their of own lives and content. That’s all problematic for Facebook’s ad views. Facebook wants to avoid scenarios such as “Look how many Likes they get. My life is lame in comparison” or “why even share if it’s not going to get as many Likes as her post and people will think I’m unpopular”.

September 3, 2019
(Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) said on Tuesday its face recognition technology will now be available to all users with an option to opt out, while deciding to discontinue a related feature called ‘Tag Suggestions’.

Facebook today announced it’d be rolling out its facial recognition settings to everyone — and that and that it’d be turned off by default for new users. Anyone who doesn’t already have this setting will be able to notified and asked if they want to turn it on.

The feature was first introduced in 2017, but not everyone got it at the time. Now Facebook is switching over for everyone, and those who’re getting the new setting will have it turned off.
Facebook’s AI Applied Research Lead, Srinivas Narayanan, was quick to point out that you might not be able to use all of Facebook’s lovely features that use your face [...]

"In addition, features like Photo Review, which lets you know when you appear in photos even if you are not tagged, as long as you have permission to see the post based on its privacy setting, will not be activated. People will still be able to manually tag friends, but we won’t suggest you to be tagged if you do not have face recognition turned on."​

Mark Zuckerberg has "repeatedly lied to the American people about privacy," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said in a recent interview with the Willamette Week, a Portland alternative weekly newspaper. "I think he ought to be held personally accountable, which is everything from financial fines to—and let me underline this—the possibility of a prison term."

Zuckerberg, Wyden said, has "hurt a lot of people."​

Wyden argues that the solution is more vigorous enforcement of laws that do still apply to online companies—including laws that require companies to be honest with consumers and investors. Wyden pointed to laws that allow executives to be held personally accountable if they lie about their company's finances. But Wyden didn't point to any specific law that could allow such harsh penalties over privacy violations.

Today, with federal agencies investigating whether the company’s tight integration between its family of products represents anti-competitive behavior, Facebook released in the United States a new service that moves to further knit them all together. It’s called Facebook Dating, and I wrote about it at The Verge: [...]

The most notable thing about Facebook Dating from a regulatory point of view is likely the way it takes advantage of at least five pillars of the company.

It uses your Facebook friend graph and profile to find you matches and verify the authenticity of your account. It lets you find romantic partners among people who are in the same Facebook groups, or attending the same Facebook events, that you are. It encourages you coordinate your plans on Messenger.
And finally, with the US launch, Facebook Dating has added a close integration with Instagram.​

[...]The fact that someone is using Facebook Dating is kept siloed; your Facebook life and your Facebook Dating life are supposedly separate. But under the surface, it seems as if every part of the service is integrated with Facebook’s other properties, which in turn gives Facebook more personal data to potentially target users with ads. New tactics, same old objective.

It’s not clear whether Facebook will use data gathered through the dating service for ad targeting. It’s also not clear whether messages sent between Dating users are end-to-end encrypted (though Facebook has publicly stated its intention to implement encryption on all of its messaging services). [...]​

And for the moment, it’s ad-free and doesn’t require in-app purchases to use any of its features. That’s a luxury that smaller products simply can’t afford.

September 9, 2019
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch billionaire John de Mol on Monday said he would ask a court to rule in the case he filed against Facebook Inc earlier this year over fake bitcoin ads.
De Mol, the businessman who created the “Big Brother” reality television program, said it had proved to be impossible to reach an agreement with Facebook over measures to stop fake ads.

For the third time, Mark Zuckerberg is refusing to answer questions from an extraordinary gathering of lawmakers from around the world who are investigating Facebook's role in election meddling and the spread of disinformation.

The group from a dozen countries has met twice in the last year, in London and Ottawa, Canada, to question social media executives and compare notes from their investigations. Both previous hearings included heated exchanges with lower-level Facebook executives sent in Zuckerberg's stead.
Hildegarde Naughton, chair of Ireland's Oireachtas Communications Committee, who will oversee the November hearing, said in a statement to CBS News she is "obviously disappointed that Mr. Zuckerberg has declined a third request to appear before the International Grand Committee."

"However this will not prevent the Committee continuing its work and holding social media companies to account for their lack of transparency and inability to self-regulate," Naughton said.​

Online, value is quantifiable. The worth of a person, idea, movement, meme, or tweet is often based on a tally of actions: likes, retweets, shares, followers, views, replies, claps, and swipes-up, among others.
As Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey put it at last year’s WIRED25 conference: “Right now we have a big Like button with a heart on it and we’re incentivizing people to want it to go up,” and to get more followers.

But these tactics are attracting increased scrutiny, about their impact on the health of the internet and on society at large. Publicly measurable indicators—including views, retweets, or likes—are “one of the driving forces in radicalization,” says Whitney Phillips, a media manipulation researcher and associate professor at Syracuse University.

In May, Instagram hid the number of likes on users’ posts in Canada; it has since hidden the count elsewhere, including Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand. The company says the change is to incentivize users to focus on the content shared, rather than the like tallies [...]